I’m Tired Boss
But We’ll Be Alright
For time efficiency, I’m going to write this post in bullet points.
I’m still unemployed. It sucks, especially considering I’ve had about three or four very near misses at this point.
I’m not yet nihilistic or angry, but I am feeling a little bit spiteful. In the past, my typical reaction to this kind of failure has been to take matters into my hands, and do some sort of certification or project to shore up weaknesses on my resume. At this point in my career, and given how far I’m getting in my interviews, I don’t think this is a good use of my time.
So instead, I’m leaning into substack more!
That may seem a little silly, but I’ve been on the platform for about 18 months now, and I think it’s still a platform with lots of growth potentiall. I think it’s still in the early adoption phase.
I am rebranding my main blog “Constructive Skepticism” into “Mitigated Skepticism.” I want the main blog to reflect my more Humean instincts. The constructive skepticism title came from not wanting to be penciled in to one kind of content (religion), and wanting to demonstrate the general applicability of a moderate skeptic philosophy. I still stand by that project! I just think it’s better expressed by communicating Hume’s philosophy. When I started this substack, I did not realize how ignorant the median online philosophy enjoyer was of Hume’s philosophy.
With this rebrand, I’m going to aim to write more specifically about Hume’s philosophy, how people misunderstand it, etc. That’s not to say I won’t write about other things, but I want to focus more on Hume research as a sort of psychological anchoring for my writing projects.
I am also rebranding my second blog “Joe writes about sports” to be “Sports And Philosophy.” I’m aiming to write a lot more about sports and philosophy because I think it’s a neglected topic online. There’s a whole field of sports philosophy, but I don’t think it’s that influential. I’m going to be doing some research on sports philosophy, but I’m also going to have my own takes as well. I’m hoping this substack doesn’t just communicate sports philosophy, but perhaps even primarily communicates sports to philosophy enjoyers (who seem to be nerds who need to touch grass) and philosophy to sports fans (who could use to read more).
I’m changing my profile name back to my real name so I can associate more with my work on substack. The reason I changed it in the first place was to avoid drama with various companies’ social media policies that I may apply for. I don’t really care about that anymore. I don’t think there’s anything controversial in my actual posts, though notes may be another story.
This is also so people can differentiate my two different substacks. I imagine sports people may not be interested in, say, Hume’s argument on miracles.
I’m going to try to post less notes and be on the substack app less. I am addicted to this platform. To the extent that I make myself look bad here, it’s by being mean to (objectively foolish) commenters who respond to my notes. I don’t like that. I also don’t like how I reach for substack as much as I do.
On a more personal note, I’m changing the way I read books now. I typically read lots of books at once, often not making progress or DNFing after having a book on my reading list for like 6 months. Instead, I’m going to read primarily books that I can write posts about. Obviously, this is kind of limiting, but I’ve always been transactional in the books I read in the first place. I like reading, but I have to differentiate between reading because I want to and reading because I think it would be cool to say I read something.
In my early to mid 20s, I could read 60 books a year on average. Now, I just don’t have the time. Even when I don’t have a job, I have more life obligations to keep up with. I also prefer to spend my time catching up with culture (like watching sports or YouTube) and writing than I do reading that many books. I also like practicing guitar! You’ll read in a lot of self help books that the key to productivity is knowing when to say no to things. That is, knowing when a new opportunity costs you more than it benefits you. At this phase of my life, I have to be much more selective with the books I read; part of this is because I’m not as curious as I used to be, but a big part of it is just knowing my interests as an adult, but also my specialties. I’d rather read a book on Hume than, say, Black Holes. If this sports philosophy substack takes off, I’ll definitely read more about philosophy in sports because those are two interseting subjects for me.
I will still post pictures of Margaux the Chinchilla. I will not betray my brand identity!